03.17.04
time buttoned up to the collar
earson: she's your cocaine - tori amos
eyeson: punctuation
thoughton: quotation
sulane pinched the cigarette away from her lower lip. she looked at him from underneath eyebrows and greasy yellow curls - from the streetlamp shadows hung like my secret life from her eyelashes.
"i don't do anything for free, shane."
"for the right one you would. you would do anything. like hedley, you would do anything
for hedley."
"shut up
about hedley."
his pause was for a lesbian fantasy - hers was for a sort of startled cathedral quiet.
--
when the silence was done, sulane reached across the table for the creamer caddy. she plucked the cold, plastic, quarter-edged hygenic-ly sealed cups and she began to stack them restlessly. four birthed the base of a triangle, arranged in a row with her turpentine stained fingertips.
"it always costs you something. you're just kidding yourself if you think casual sex never costs you anything."
he rubbed at his lips with his thumbprint. very red lips, plump, textured with the lines - as though lips needed space to stretch, like bridges when they're hot. then he sipped from his coffee, and he frowned into the bottom of his beige diner cup.
"you think too much. that's your problem. you should be more spontaneous. less intense, you shouldn't focus so much on shit like you do. it scares people, your painting scares people."
"how do you know my painting scares people? and it sells doesn't it? like my tits, they sell. they're not like everyone else's tits, but they sell."
"for chrissake, sue, i'm trying to talk to you. wouldja calm down?"
the triangle was nearly complete. nearly complete, but she began to flick the little white tubs of cream at him across the table so that he had to frown again and rake his stringy brown hair back from his forehead.
"i am calm. it's not my problem that i think too much about streetlamps and snowflakes, eh? it's *your* problem. it's your problem."
--
--
sulane sprawled on the pidgeon shit green couch and she stared at the vaulted celing and she said aloud with her foot nodding at the air: maybe the time has come to get out of this business of self-prophecy and twice-removed atonement. maybe i am not my father's faults. maybe i am worth more than 'yes.'
the studio was not wide, but long. as one faced west there was a heavy door on the north wall and a marching set of four floor-to-ceiling windows on the south. their sills were crowded with candles of many generations - sputtering, dancing, reaching, drowning - all melted atop one another and around, wax spilling timefrozen drips. the floor was a warm, glossy hardwood .. the kind with old nails, gaps between boards. the room was occupied by a stonehenge of maple easels. they were five feet tall, bracing canvases of varying sizes. their faces were turned outward, and in the midst of them was an ugly couch. a dark green couch, a sidewalk couch, a dormroom couch. upholstery full of cigarette burns. smelling of spilt beer and wine, of perfume and sweat.
sulane sprawled. her leg bent at a forty degree angle over one arm of the couch .. her head hung very close to the floor (yellow curls on seams,) and her knuckles brushed woodgrain. other fingers laid across her stomach. it was concave between hipbones. underwear and an old hanes t-shirt, the paper-thin sort, v-necked and covered over with stains; stains of paint, stains of wine, a hole where she'd put her american spirit out against her ribcage.
the room was full of yellow orange light. constantly ill at ease. sulane was drunk.
i'll take it to the Firehouse, she whispered again of the piece not two steps away .. the oil and blood and newspaper mixed media she'd named 'abrupt.' the Firehouse would show it.
him and his goddamn words of wisdom.
---
sulane leapt at the canvas with her red brush and she howled as though she'd been struck by inevitability and she added her tears to the rouge. she sat all night with the new york times trimming out words like 'racist remarks' and 'neverland' and 'died suddenly' and 'snowman' and 'liberal' and 'traditional family.' she affixed them to the slashes that represented the downslanting slats of the barely legal low-income housing closet where she'd watched it all unfold. as fingers, flowers, legs, and hairtwists will do. she thought about whether or not dean would save america and she surmised: not without corporate backing.
---
sulane rediscovered time at dawn on Saturday. she knew it was tomorrow because she had a headache and her hands were red – chapped – broken by the scissors she’d used to trim out the closet words, her thumbprints snipped and covered with coagulated gore, stinging with oil and with turpentine from the brushes. sulane dusted off the bones and picked out the arrowheads .. she sat up in the hallway and she groaned her aftermath, wondering where the midnight had gone.
the painting was done. though she’d been manic, she knew this was true – wandering into the studio, the drop cloth was evidence. urine – paint – blood – newspaper clippings – other, yellow orange stains were mysterious .. they smelled stark and static, they were chemical and stiff. sulane yanked the cloth up and into her arms, bunching it into curves of flesh and butterfly bones. people stared at her in the elevator, stole glances at her naked legs while she went across the 6th floor foyer to stuff the cloth down the garbage chute. she strode back to the suite and she threw herself onto the balcony to freeze the dumb fog from her brain.
tom was there in the street, smoking a cigarette. she knew it was he because of the way the silhouette stood, and the way his hat sat cock-eyed on his moptop. he seemed to be watching the building, but he was there often .. sulane had named him tom because he seemed to sit on the fence, waiting. and although he wouldn’t howl aloud, his frustration when he left at 3pm always seemed palpable .. as though he’d missed something, or something had missed him. he was probably just waiting for the bus. but he always gave her pause and he’d inspired some comforting idle thought.
she put her hands on the railing - drew them back to her breastbone with a whistling breath (in her nose) – snow, the impressions of her fingers. sulane shivered. went back inside to make some dry toast and to put on some clothes. time to join the human race down the street .. make observations in the diner. maybe the guy who wanted it for free would be there, and she could try to set him straight again. maybe his girlfriend would be there too, to fill up the ashtray and stare at the cars going by.
---
sulane watched the chick out of the corner of her eye. the chick never looked up from the street, not even when sulane sat down with a vinyl ‘whuff’ or when she called the waitress’ name .. ‘maxine’ said her tag,’ and sulane asked ‘maxine’ for a cup of coffee. her thoughts were still slow blossoming from the evening before .. her stomach still roiled and tossed, so that the first thing shane said to her was: “you look like shit.”
and she said: “hey, cool, you too. can’t you say something nicer than that? why does the first thing out of your mouth have to hurt me.”
“so you’re being sensitive today. i can *hurt* you today.”
“i see you brought silent bob with you.”
“who’s the asshole, now?”
“’good morning. i’m so glad to see you. how did your night go? looks like you had some trouble with that new piece.’ duh. that’s what a friend says. that’s what a friend would say to me.”
“if i said any of that to you, you’d think i’d finally gone over to the idiots. you’d never speak to me again.”
the chick had long brown hair that fell against her cheek in a curve that framed her bones. she had big, dark, reflective eyes that flashed when she turned her attention between this car and that pedestrian .. sulane’d never been able to decide whether the girl was disabled or just quiet – the former would have explained the lack of reflex. but sometimes sulane thought she reacted to the conversation .. and sometimes shane would put his arm around the chick’s thin shoulders, he would put his red lips to her ear unlike a brother might.
“it does look like you had a hard night with the canvas, though, sulane. did it fight back?”
“ .. might as well have. no. i was thinking. i was thinking i’d start showing them. at the Firehouse, like you said.”
“fuck right! how long have I been saying this?” he slapped the table to punctuate the profanity, his palm thunder-clapping to the formica. he leaned forward, a long and tapering chunk of bangs swinging forward – stringy shadow on his temple, not quite concealing the glee in his gaze.
“two years?”
“two years. two years. i’ll talk to josephine. she can come take a look. i’ve been telling her about you all along.”
“who’s she. not that woman you introduced me to Christmas last year.”
“you might like her better when she says ‘bravo’ to your flashback mixed media.”
the chick had her knees drawn up against her body. she hugged her shins tightly and she smoked constantly, her ballerina throat arching from her collar as though to say it had danced before it had been in 24hr breakfast purgatory .. her eyes were ringed very darkly in eyeliner, clown tears on her face said she’d wept not long ago. shane wouldn’t talk about the chick except to say that he loved her more than breath and that they were lovers in a terminal way.
“well. i guess she can look. i want to show them, maybe i can sell them. maybe i can make some less filthy money.”
“your money isn’t filthy, sulane.”
“you say that like you mean it.”
---
an’lee kwan was a cocoa colored woman. she had black hair with the consistency of straw. her eyes were big, black, shiny buttons that – even when clouded by heroin – often swam with gasoline rainbows and other heavens. she’d been born in a black neighborhood to a dark chocolate voodoo mistress and an asian man with questionable business practices. her mother had gifted her with an ethiopian throat – her father had made them desperately poor. when an’lee met james o’reardon she thought she’d seen the end of the trashcan scavenger hunts and the electric disconnections. unfortunately, an’lee kwan was wrong.
james o’reardon was an all-american mutt built tall and triangular. his features were sharp and pale and his head was always clean-shaven. he preferred the marlboro man mode of dress and was never seen on the street without a heavy leather jacket, a tight t-shirt, and a pair of prettily bulging blue-jeans. from his father he’d inherited a cruel streak that, with his mother’s help, had turned his heart to sticky tar so that an’lee became trapped against it and could not flee. he forced her into prostitution when she was seventeen. he said he would save her from everything. he told her that, really, sex was her only talent.
an’lee became pregnant with grace one september afternoon. she remembered until the day she died that the 16th had been unseasonably cold. she remembered watching her effort puff into the air, great chugging steam engine clouds of breath evaporating toward the ceiling while james used her up a little more. she waited until she was four months pregnant to tell him and when he discovered it was too late to abort the baby, he decided to ignore it. an’lee gave birth to grace kwan exactly nine months later in a free clinic on a June Tuesday. from there she went to the county hospital, and she signed the consent to have her ovaries and uterus removed. an’lee would dream about babies every night for five years.
grace kwan had been led to think that they loved her mother. she’d been coached, carefully, to believe in love like another person might believe in god. so she watched with a sort of profound pride, ecstacy, elation that these men would adore her mother with such fervor .. she sat in the bedroom closet most of the days between infant and 12. grace discovered that the money on the dresser appeared habitually on days when her mother was adored. she knew, then, that james was only honest about money and that her mother was only honest about pain. an’lee died of aids on february 23rd at eight twenty-three.
grace kwan changed her name to sulane palona the day she turned eighteen. she’d chosen her last name from words an italian tourist had chanted during intercourse. while he was shrugging into his suit jacket and reaching for his wallet, she asked him what the words had meant: mia .. palona .. mia .. palona. and he said, with a pause and a chuckle, that they meant ‘my dove’ in his native language. sulane preferred to think that for the rest of her days she would be ‘miss dove.’ and she held that close to her heart while she watched the chick stare out into the street – smoking her camel straights – eyes full of other heavens and gasoline rainbows.
---
sulane stood wringing her hands at the back of the third white room, her knobby yellow and pink knees jabbing round from the curves and swoops of a short red skirt. her arms were long and final, her wrists were narrow. she wore her bleached blonde hair in bobby pins punctuated with tiny plastic poppies. her converse sneakers twisted against the faux granite floor.
they milled through the gallery. seven pieces were mounted on the wall, hung to within millimeters of nirvana light. each was labeled carefully with the artist’s name, the media she’d used, and the title of the piece. sulane had fashioned the title plates from clippings of a dime store King Arthur adaptation. the book still lay, ratty and raped of the correct letters, at the foot of her bed. the people paused to read the gothic typeset as it whispered to them: ‘horror’ – ‘majesty’ – ‘wanton’ – ‘confusion’ – ‘drunk’ – ‘rage’ – ‘oblivion.’ little did they know: the words were pieces of cheap fantasy fiction. sulane explained their significance to a woman who inquired about the price of ‘confusion,’ and the woman nodded politely. one by one sulane sent them on their way, artwork and patrons.
tom had come. tom had come in a tipped black fedora with a black hatband, his fingers fisted in his pockets, his dull black loafters scuffing the floor. he stood for forty-five minutes in front of each work in blood and prose, in oil and tears (media noted carefully on each tag) and when he went to ask sulane about the purchase price for ‘majesty,’ sulane felt tetanus in her jaw and fever in her flesh. he was not handsome. his nose was long and his mouth was thin – but his ears were listening to her queerly, closely, they were against her and for her and his hair curved to frame them in such a way that she found herself suddenly speaking. she told him about how she’d cut her right big toe with a clamshell to make the pigment for ‘blue,’ the notionword that hovered in the lower right hand corner of the 5’ by 7” canvas. he nodded quietly and he reached for her hand, he leaned like a grandmother and blinked gaping Indian ink eyes at her. today he looked like he'd caught his bus, she thought.
shane and sulane:
“it went well.”
“yeah. did, didn’t it?”
“she thought ‘drunk’ should have gone for a lot more.”
“your chick?”
“yeah, she told me she thought you know a lot more than you say.”
“she said that to you.”
“yeah.”
“when?”
“why are you so interested?”
“because. that chick of yours. she’s got something .. she always looks like she’s been crying.”
“and you wonder why I think you two look alike?”
---
"how do you want me?"
"just sit. just do what you want to do. talk to me."
"most people are uncomfortable being naked in front of perfect strangers."
"i'm not."
"you're not most people."
[rustlings, the creak of couch springs, the whoosh-swish-taptap of a brush being rinsed to use again.]
"so why are you here?"
"because you asked me to come."
"how did you know i wasn't some sort of murderer? some sort of s/n/m mistress?"
"that's ridiculous."
"but why is it ridiculous? it should be more ridiculous that your cock is half hard and i'm watching you chuckle. it should be more strange to be having a beer with your ankle on your knee, chatting with a prostitute on a tuesday."
"you're absolutely right."
"so why say 'yes?'"
"i think it was 'oblivion.'"
[a pause, the flickerswitch of candles in the dark and against windowpanes.]
"i didn't think you liked it. you passed it without really looking at it."
"it was obvious. and there was something about it that. i don't know."
"what?"
"i want to say it :hurt: me. but i think that's the wrong word."
"no, that's the right word."
"is that what you meant when you painted it?"
"that's what it meant when i started the piece, i supp - hold it. hold it, don't move. you're missing the bus again and i like it."
"what the fuck .. ?"
"you're changing your goddamn expression - shut up - hold your beer by the neck between your fingers like you were - keep talking about 'oblivion.'"
"'oblivion' or oblivion?"
"whatever makes you frown like that. put your fedora back on."
---
he slept on the couch and she smoked a cigarette in the balcony doorway. he'd put his clothes back on with trite human shame and a faint frown of regret - she'd bleached him of inspiration and he was white skin, dark chest hair and pink nipples again. he was in the studio underneath his coat with his hat covering his eyes and his forehead. he'd snored softly - she'd let him be.
hedley was in her bedroom on the other side of the suite, talking on the phone in a loud - drunk - red developing light sort of tone that made sulane's eyes the color of clouds. when hedley was done talking down the line, she marched out into the main rooms and she went to sulane to exchange a hard mouthed morning kiss and some mutterings. off to the kitchen with a gruff: 'coffee?' spilt into morninglight along with black grounds and burnt burner caffe bean stench.
sulane nodded a little and wiped at her lower lip with the print of a turpentine stained thumb .. the painter was a tall, thin woman with a crown of bleached blonde hair. her curls were cropped short around her ears and they left her throat bare - the ethiopian throat she'd inherited from her mother, though instead of cocoa her skin was the color of coffee with cream. sulane had a shape that was more boyish than girlish. she had a model's waifish nothing hips - barely budded breasts - the kind of drifting grace that was constantly thoughtful and on the very brink of anger. she stood in the balcony door bent against the air now. her mouth wore hedley's kiss ungratefully.
hedley handed sulane a cup of mud and milk the very color of her flesh. then she sat down on one of the deep-seated couches - she was dressed in underwear, a pair of steve madden slippers, and an old def leppard t-shirt. hedley took photographs of cities deconstructing. she likened the decomposition to society, the world, and herself depending on the day.
"you didn't bring your work home again, did you, sulane?"
"sort of."
"so you painted him. what part of him?"
"the part that doesn't understand, i think. the part that always expects his ride to be on time."
there was a pause. both of them sipped their coffee and borrowed notions from the grey and blue sunrise.
"i didn't fuck him."
"i didn't ask you if you had. .. you goin' to the diner, today?"
"some things to ask shane about."
"shane? or, indirectly, the chick."
"maybe it's really about the chick."
"god. did you just admit that i might be right?"
"things are gonna change so fast."
"i'm not gonna have to feed this dude, right?"
---
"hey sulane."
"shane. be honest with me. just be honest with me. how was the show."
[vinyl sit-down old foam *wuff.*]
"um. i already told you, it was great, it went great, you got the cash you deserved for your ideas."
"do you think i could do it again?"
[the noise of a steel spoon in a coffee cup, stirring and ringing. tink-tink-tink under shane's response.]
"absolutely yes."
"i didn't go to a job last night. i painted instead, shane. i didn't go."
"are you okay .. ?"
"idon'tknowidon'tknow. he'll come looking for me. he'll come around asking questions."
" .. you're really fucking scared, aren't you?"
"would you come with me, back to the apartment? will you walk me back when i go?"
shane glances at the chick and a heavy silence blossomed as she stared back. her great, dark eyes were like lamplight puddles - starred and flat at once, limping through midnight. he seemed to ask her silently and her mouth gave a little twitch as though to respond .. shane exhaled through his nose and reached for the chick's hand. her rings flashed as fingers tightened.
"i don't think so sulane."
"but you said you'd help me if i needed it!" [too loud. the noise of the spoon again, in the cup.]
"we don't get into that stuff. that's stuff you have to work out yourself, that's not our gig."
"well. fucking what is your gig then, shane?"
"i'm here to support you sulane, you've done a good thing with the show, you can do it again. i just can't start walking you home every day. you need to call the police."
"you know better than that. i can't do that."
"he's your pimp, sulane. he was never your father. you need to - "
"the hell with what you think i need. the hell with that, you and your goddamn mute chick, what do you know!"
[...]
"i've got to get home to hedley."
"everything'll come out alright."
"maybe i'll see you tomorrow."
---
james screwed his cigarette out against the brick. twinkling embers screamed for the sidewalk and met it, already dead. the butt followed along - broken and still smoking - but the man ground his heel against it, twisted it to pulp and left it to breathe its grey vapor last.
the doorman let him in because when james said he was her father, the resemblance was clear. she had his build and his confidence, the clear steel and blue topaz irises. the doorman was intimidated, too. his security was not forthright - he was not used to dealing with james' type.
his boots struck the ground like a business woman's gucci heels. tock-tock-tock to announce a presence and a status. he went to the elevator bank. he stared at his reflection in the copper plate, watched the muscle in his own stark jawhinges as they flexed with anger. his reflection slid away. people and fragrances had exited into the lobby. when james stepped onto the elevator he appeared calm.
he reached to press the '3' button with the middle knuckle of his left hand. his rings gave a glitter. james was the kind of man who was good at poker. the elevator doors slid closed, his jeans and his t-shirt and his leather jacket disappeared. there was grey at his temples now. james was in his fifties, cold and handsome.
when the elevator birthed him onto the third floor, he took some time in the blood red hallway .. he paused, perusing the photographs of deconstructing cities and deconstructing buildings and deconstructing lives. he paused to take a good look at their front door, complete with peep hole and a curling french handle. when he knocked he was clearing his throat and cracking the bones in his neck. hedley called from inside:
"hang on, hang on .. did you forget your key aga - " hedley paused, her fingers still in her greasy blonde hair, breasts pausing against def leppard's logo.
"how's the weathah, hedley," he asked her in his faux southern accent. then he laughed - he put his hands in his pockets. powerful muscle moved in the bridge of his shoulders.
"how did you get in here. you get out of here," she said at first in a stupor of surprise - one of her eyes was wide, the other was narrow.
"you tell me why grace missed her appointment last ni(a)ght .. or maybe where i might find her, and shur as sugah, i'll leave."
"no fucking way. you're trespassing, and now you're leaving." she started to shut him out.
"i am *so* sorry you feel that way," said james with a wide smile. he put his shoulder to the door. he put his hands on hedley's narrow shoulders and he pushed, hard enough to send her sprawling. .. tock-tock-tock inside, and he kicked the long red door closed.
"what are ya gonna do, honey? call the po-lice?"
---
sulane sauntered and her scarf swayed, fringe jangling at the air an inch beside her belly button. she smoked quickly and nervously, her brow furrowed. her eyes squinted to see the sidewalk ahead, moving along past the first apartment windows. sulane passed the screwed-out butt that might have been her signpost; she looked into the same copper-plated elevator doors and she rode to the third floor while tapping her platforms. she was watching the led, listening to the doom-tolling ding as floors ticked by. james saw her first. their first words were grunts and squeals, the metal *boom* of the back of sulane's head meeting the elevator wall. he covered her mouth with a hand. his knuckles were bleeding.
"shh." [the elevator doors repeated him.] "m'only gonna say this'a'once, grace. you miss one more of you appointments or i'll make sure you nevah breathe fresh air again. hear?"
[he uncovered her mouth and she spat on him viciously. cut to a hand - edit, white flash - shot: sulane's mouth, bleeding. lips shivering. head to the left.] "HEAR?"
[she coughs.] "i hear, alright. you be a good boy now, jimmy, and let me go back up to the .. to the apartment. we're uptown. somebody's gonna call the cops and we'll both be in jail." [he's very close, leaning on her, breathing in her ear. they are much the same height, but he breathes onto her cheek just the same.]
"you think i don't know what's going on here? you think i'm some kinda moron, theah, gracie? no, you ain't-a-gonna miss tonight's gig. no, tonight you've got an escort service."
"c'mon jimm - " [hand - flash - lips - ding.]
"don'tyoucomeonjimmymeyouwhore. you call me james, you know better than that. you're right about the cops. i guess that means you'd jest better stand up straight and come quiet into the lobby. mm?" [doors say 'shh.' public noise. murmurs and high heels and luggage wheels.]
"i guess so." [she stands, he shuffles backward with an arm held out to her. sulane takes it and together, they cross the lobby. no matter that her lip is already swelling. steps through revolving doors, sunshine on glass. a cry in the lobby behind as sulane and james are joined by a broad, fat man in a white t-shirt with yellow armpits. sulane turns as she's led further down the sidewalk. at once sagging, a sidewayshalfbackward lurch toward lobby windows. hedley is running. hedley's eye is black and her t-shirt is torn, she's holding the front of it together with a fist. her cheek is swollen and she shuffles her right foot. she comes up against the revolving doors - a momentary crowd prevents her from leaping out onto the street.] "fuuuUUCKER! how *dare* you touch her, how dare-you-touch-her!" [she struggles, begins to sob, last words are a squeak and a tumble. james holds her arm tightly to himself. the fat man braces her at her other side. sulane shakes her head violently at hedley and mouths her 'olive juice.' she mouths something else, holds up five fingers .. hedley stops shoving her way to the front and stands, limp, while sulane is put into a cadillac. puzzled. five? the car swerves away from the curb, into traffic.]
---
"oh my god, sulane, are you alright? are you alright? i'll kill him. we'll kill him together."
"just the same old jive .. "
"hey. hey, i want to talk to you. sulane .. ? (this is a switch. fuck, she's usually following *me* into the darkroom.)"
sulane and hedley weren't lovers. they just took shelter in one another, once in awhile, (riders in trenchcoats standing at a graffiti bus stop.) sometimes they took advantage of one another's warmth - the need to feel loved with the genuine void, not the creeping fate realization - and they were briefly sated. they tangled together, quietly using one another. occasionally.
other days they were quarrelling roommates, and still other days they were inappropriately equipped astronauts on each other's planets. they were friends on occasions when the need to talk was master and the need to be planets was slave .. it was better this way, ultimately, to be at a perfect distance from one another. hedley had killed a man sans witnesses - she saw a therapist she didn't talk to in order to sate her wealthy family. her photographs were a black and white autobiography of pain. sulane understood this particular art - her paintings were more of the same. sulane and hedley weren't lovers, not in a conventional sense. they were compatriots of the same rank on a battlefield for the same reasons, weeping on one another's naked shoulders, seasoning their tongues with one another's tears.
sulane disappeared into her side of the apartments without another word. she didn't comfort hedley because hedley didn't need comforting. hedley would decide - standing in the dark living room with a swollen face and a cold beer - that she didn't have room in her heart to pick sulane's problems apart. she sat back down on the couch and she continued getting drunk.
---
a few days turned into weeks and went by while sulane was gathering courage to go back to the diner. she knew shane would be waiting for her .. she knew the chick would be there too, her eyes polluted with gasoline, their moisture swimming in rainbows .. she thought - while chain-smoking in the bathroom on sunday morning - that it was difficult enough to face shane without bearing up under that stare. sulane dreaded the chick's eyes more than she dreaded the confession that must come.
it was best, in the end, that she ran into tom. he stopped her with his left shoulder:
"hey. you were just gonna walk on by without saying 'hello,' huh? paint a guy's cock in red and leave him in the dust?"
"this isn't a good time .. . "
"what happened to your lip?"
"walked into a red cock."
"c'mon."
"no, *you* c'mon. i've got to get going. cup of coffee with my name on it."
"stop. sulane. hey, you're going to let me know when your next show is?"
"no more naked men in this next series. just fingerpaint and blood. maybe a titprint."
"i know what you are."
"no you *don't.* where do you get off?"
"that's kind of a personal qu - "
" .. shh .. . "
"how much for your time, sulane, i've got plenty of money."
"what kind of time do you want from me? dinnertime? fucktime? time to talk?"
"time to talk. at least let me come with you. let me come with you. i'll keep my mouth shut, i'll drink my coffee."
" .. tom."
"tom isn't my name. *you* gave me that name. (i think that's the only thing you've given me.)"
".. come on. i'll introduce you to shane. but you keep your promise. you keep your mouth shut. and don't talk to the chick."
"the chick?"
---
tom sat down as though he’d always been there. he settled into the booth behind sulane so that she sat against the wall and closest to the window. across from the chick. the chick’s gaze turned from the street and into the corners of her eyes, fixed against sulane for a pearl necklace of moments .. it wasn’t sarcastic, or rude .. it didn’t contain a warning, it wasn’t full of endearments .. it was acknowledging. quiet. it said that they had moved to the same parallel. it made sulane so uneasy that she glanced at tom rather than endure the rest of her stare. the chick looked away and exhaled a plume of smoke against the window. it spouted grey from nostrils and billowed outward against glass – sulane had an apocalypse vison when she noticed the smoke spreading. something was ending. maybe something was beginning.
tom and shane were in the middle of a discussion when she tuned back in. they had introduced themselves and again, she’d missed tom’s real name.
“yeah, we get together almost every morning. it’s been harder, lately, but. we always seem to find the time eventually.”
“so what’s she called?”
“she doesn’t like to talk. or tell anybody her name. or even be referred to.”
“why?”
[a pause. shane laughs and stops the waitress for more coffee.] “you know, I don’t think anybody’s ever asked me that question straight up, before. .. I guess .. I guess I couldn’t tell you, exactly, except that when we met, she was sitting on the stoop of an apartment building downtown. she was smoking and looking at the street .. and then she looked at me .. and I knew she had to come along with me. it’s so stupid, but I think. I think she can talk without saying anything, you know? I think she .. “ [the chick reaches to hold his hand again. shot of sulane’s eyes, recognizing the gesture. shane’s smile dissipates.] “yeah, well. she doesn’t like it when people talk about her. as though she wasn’t there.”
“don’t worry about shane or the chick, tom. just talk like they’re one person. might’s’well.”
“so what do you guys do. you just talk .. ?”
“just talk. but you can do a lot when you’re just talking, tom. you can change your life.”
“that how you decided to show your paintings?”
“how do you know I hadn’t shown them, before?”
“have to confess something, su. tom and I know one another. from the bus, we’ve talked before.”
“but not about some things, obviously. but about me?”
“don’t take it personally. you’re a tough egg to crack, sulane.”
[sulane looks at tom again. she turns her gaze over his face a few times in alarm – looks at his hands. she gives him a powerful shove.] “get out. get out of this booth, get out. I want to get out.”
“sulane? what’s the matter? su?” [tom rises, but he’s got his hands in his pockets. his expression is drawn and sad. sulane rushes out of the diner, coat and skirt flaring. the door bangs, a bell jangles.]
tough egg to crack. tough egg, she muttered to herself, thumbing tears away from her lashes, marching down the sidewalk. she knew he wasn’t in persuit. sulane knew him – not just from the street where he waited for the bus, and not just from the evening they’d spent in the studio.
two years hung in the void between the day her mother died and the night james found her. in that void she’d been nothing but a hooker, nothing but street trash, she wouldn’t even have responded to her own name .. she hadn’t been a high-priced dominant, then. she’d been one of the uglies. and she didn’t remember any faces from that time in her life save very few, and only because they’d left a less than kind impression. .. but here, out of the dark, had come another face. and she’d recognized it. and perhaps it had not been cruel to her. some movie, she thought. some kind of pretty woman. snot on her lip .. she wiped it on her sleeve, made her lower lip long with the appropriate muscles, and she hopped the next bus she saw stopped.
she ought not to trust him, she thought. something about the memory was tainted. sulane never remembered anything that wasn’t ugly.
---
"kneel."
the color of that morning had lingered with her long after her ritual visit with shane and the chick. it had colored her thoughts as she worked stretching canvas for the third in the new series, memory punctuated by finishing nails .. it had been the color of the steam in her yellow bathroom as she made herself ready for her nightly appointment. hedley's tongue was her conscience as she writhed into leathers and packed her bag.
"beg."
they'd have to kill him. hedley said sulane'd just have to say the word .. say the word .. what word? the murder word, the slaughter word, the end word. end word. end of the world. sulane wouldn't go to jail. wouldn't, would rather die. and to expose james to the police would be to seal her own fate .. his mouth would open, the slurry would come out, her life would leak into an iron drain. she lifted the whip and flicked it's black scaled body across the john's back. he flailed and cried out but he put his head on the floor again, he kissed her red laquered toes and he begged again. sulane's ear tipped toward her naked shoulder. her hard eyes scrutinized him. this wasn't love.
"all the way down on the floor, bitch."
he was crying. he'd cry until he'd had his fill of it. sulane's old ice irises were glossy with murder .. perhaps he was - almost - nearly - genuinely afraid of her, tonight. his pink skin quivered. you asked for it, said the pinch of her mouth and the sudden straits of her teeth. you asked for it.
the word had to be said. but when? james would suspect any number of things if she asked him for a meeting. better to bring his wrath by missing another job .. another snivelling corporate whiner would wait for her in a hotel room. he would get angry, belligerent. he would call james and james would come. self defense, self defense, self defense .. it echoed in her ears, the tone was fine and good, the intentions were pure. she heard the whip again. the rich man was sobbing.
---
sulane slid out onto the street with her bag thumbed over her shoulder. she didn't carry the money. james and the buyer made those exchanges exclusively .. more often than not, sulane's reputation bled along the company veins and she was carefully distributed. tall, blonde, black asian pill. she enjoyed the attention sometimes. it was like being a rockstar in private, people knowing your name, people paying to touch you. sulane struck a match and hung the cigarette on her lip. chase was on her mind. he never asked for anything but scotland.
the tomcat had asked for everything. she'd avoided him during those dark years and even after, when she was making her own version of fandom .. he wanted to make a pretty woman out of her. sort of. but he'd wanted a mistress and he was a mean bitch. she remembered he was the sort of man that enjoyed the way a woman grimaced when his knuckles split her lip. when she'd seen him in the diner - invading her sanctuary - insinuating himself - she'd felt a righteous anger. and then realized later, on the street while she smoked, that she'd no right to be righteous.
two nights then. shane and the chick didn't have to know. she'd tell them later .. they wouldn't get involved anyway. but hedley'd have to know. it would happen in the house. maybe in the kitchen. they'd have to call the police as soon as he was dead. it would have to be quick, the whole process .. no other mouths, no other confessions. sulane's long legs made headway. she'd soon be riding the b train back uptown and to the studio so that she could vomit on the canvas in green and violet. but she felt there was a detour to be made and it was an important one .. it occured to her, she squinted against hte horizon.
sulane's boots steered her down the stairs and into the turnstile. she sat down in the first seat she came to. an old woman bellowed at her to put out her smoke, but sulane was in another world - drifting toward chapters, when conversation had been almost. mundane. a faint smile. those plane tickets would have been golden. maybe she'd look up chase. give him a ring. make him talk to her a little while before she took her dream out on james .. before she stabbed him in the neck. too obvious?
---
sulane focused slowly on the ceiling. at first it was close, resting on her nose, its very texture echoing the raised bumps on her flesh .. and then it rose, inch by metre by breath, until it was hung properly by shadows and the straight lines where walls joined. the windows arched their backs and cried out sunshine .. they straightened and light uncurved, stabbing clear, reaching for the space behind her eyes where inevitability lurked. she found that that space was pulsing and grey .. she lidded her eyes to look at it, the headache, squatting in the corner of her mind counting the buttons on its coat .. it murmured in the language of time, hissing and whispering:
minutes know you were dying in the dark when july came and nobody would let you out. hours realize that when you spent your tender years swallowing cum (and your pride,) that it was more than you could bear. it is understood that you would harden and finally fossilize under such conditions. surely, seconds have sympathy for your suffering. and soon the aggressor of your years will be resolved to dust .. and while you will have to wear the blood, you will no longer need the love to live.
sulane fell off of the pidgeon shit couch. her studio was again a stonehenge of pieces in progress .. the series would have to do with captivity and freedom, she'd decided. none of them had names, yet, in particular .. those she'd given distinctions to once had simply changed and lost their senses .. so that while they had color and shape and rhythm, the art was still in the womb. her womb. her headache gave a cough and a titter - the painter, prostitute held her head and laughed too - at pain, which was transient.
the sun had come up. today was the day she'd miss the last customer. who would she spend the hours with, play with while that headache of the hours expanded in her skull? with whom would she converse while she waited for the time to come to make certain her father hurt her enough to justify bleeding him to death? .. something to think about. her foot struck an empty corona bottle and she nearly stumbled, getting to her feet .. sulane turned toward the studio door, vision swinging over the woodgrain floor. if chase hadn't said something, she would have collided with him ..
you said you needed to talk, he said as he squinted at her and she stopped rubbing her hair, staring at him plainly. threw herself across the air between them a moment later, all arms and exhalations.
but it wasn't chase. very slowly his face dissolved into tom's thin, tapering, shark-like countenance .. friendly eyes with shark's pupils .. and then it was james, clutching her so tightly in his arms that she heard her ribs creak and her shoulderjoints pop like oldwood-newflames .. and she sighed .. and she turned away from the moment in waiting and she opened her eyes again. focus on the ceiling. hedley's fingers were woven into hers.
"su? su .. you're talking in your sleep again."
"hm? what'd i say."
"you said something about sharks. and buttons."
"that old dream again."
---
sulane drifted down the street along with the leaves and the old cigarette cellophane .. idle bitter winds, winter nibbling at flossy cocoa cheeks .. very briefly she feels like god, mastering her time and it's murmurings, control makes her smile. though she knew this sort of happiness would be here now and gone then .. because control in and of itself, she mused with her hands shoved deep into her pockets, was an illusion. circumstance controlled you. environment controlled you.
"fuck if an'lee is still controlling me," sulane uttered at the next wind that tugged at the curls prodding at awkward angles from her old black hat. .. the ding of the christmas bells hung on the diner door fought to rouse her .. but thoughts left their white wedding trains in her head, pouring pearly satin from her present tense .. questions in each fold .. would an'lee's love still rule her when james had bled to death? would she still be lost, would the headache still count its buttons?
the warm noisy air of the diner collided with her flesh and sulane's lashes curved against one another, fluttering, black and silver .. the stray rooftop snowflakes melted almost instantly, and poppies burst into bloom on the apples of her cheeks. she was shiny when she sat across from shane and the chick .. shane was pushing his fingers through the chick's hair today, stroking it backward. she watched the traffic as she always did. not raising her eyes from the slush in the street, staring when the cigarette smoke should have burned her tears, should have made her blink. sulane unwound the scarf from her throat.
"you're smiling."
"i am .. ? mm."
"what is it?"
"i'm having a good morning. i didn't wake up drunk in the studio again, i found my camel straights right away instead of having to hunt all over the fucking house for them .. having a good morning."
"i'm getting married."
" .. huh?"
"she's finally gonna let me make an honest woman out of her."
"i thought we weren't supposed to talk about her."
"well, this is special. where's your smile now .. ? aren't you happy?"
sulane's smile was quick to return, though now in a different tone .. her pointed summer face with its voodoo mistress lips: confused, wrinkled between brows, a little more shiny, a rush of heat. she postponed her response until she'd asked 'hello, i'm JANICE' for her coffee.
"i am .. i am happy. kinda surprised, though. guess i shouldn't be."
"you're going to come to the wedding, right? come see us stand at the window at city hall, right?"
"sure - sure. you just tell me when, maybe hedley will come too."
they were interrupted by the bells on the door. sulane wasn't in the habit of turning a look over her shoulder every time the diner door opened and closed .. though it would have been handy had instinct spoken to her this time, when tom shouldered his way into the dim. he pinched off his fedora and flicked its hatbrim. a shower of snow. dull black loafer footprints. when he put his shadow across sulane he was quiet, and he was holding his hat against his middle with something trite in his eyes. "may i sit .. ?" he said.
"fuck yooou," said sulane in descending notes, shaking her head a little, laughing at him.
"i think i was invited .. ?"
sulane's eyes and shane's eyes met across the table.
"you remember josephine? from the Firehouse? director, thought your apocalypse was fab? her husband," shane said, a carroty orange point on his comma.
her. him. yes she did. sulane was sliding over so that he could sit, another realization to make her numb .. she remembered to breathe. so that's why his face had stuck so well in her memory, such a polished fragment amongst the pieces .. ! when sulane's coffee came, the color of control had completely drained from her cheeks.
---
sulane put her ear to the elevator wall. she closed her eyes and she could hear herself going down .. she could hear the cable hanging her from heaven creaking sullenly with her weight .. she listened to her heart, she listened to the floors ticking down, she listened to the doors saying 'shh' and was strangely calmed. sulane enjoyed the elevator ride down to the lobby first thing in the morning more than she really enjoyed any other moment in her day. it was so pure, she thought, this 'going down' to 'get out.'
she spent the evening of disobedience alone with a beer. she'd chipped the old candles away from one of the windowsills with the idea of replacing them .. she'd discovered a windowseat instead, and had watched the moon move all night. she thought she'd dreamt painting hedley but apparently she hadn't .. hedley had been sleeping on the pidgeon shit green couch when sulane had wandered into the studio to say 'hello' to her works in the womb, her brainchildren .. and hedley had been beautiful. enough to drive a crazy woman a little more insane. she was escaping.
though this time when she got off the elevator she'd already decided to go uptown .. she'd visit someone she hadn't seen for some days. he'd be smoking a cigarette. he'd be wearing a short leather jacket. he wouldn't want anything from her but words - he wouldn't care that her eyes were full of ghosts and her hands were already trembling. he wouldn't ask. thank god for the self-absorbed celebrity.
---
hedley had made the phonecall. sulane’s sick, she told him. she can’t go to the thing. she’d talked him down to a visit the next day, making certain he was still brewing .. because hedley had a talent for sculpting the more subtle nuances of anger and desire. sulane could only paint it on canvas and lick it desperately, attempting to taste even the overtones of passion. it was hours now. hours away. 14 hours, maybe. time enough to have a glass of wine with the reclusive, comic-book rendition of her own heart.
he opened the door and peered at her from the shadow of the brass safety chain. the links laid intersecting infinity symbols on his cheeks, the light in the hallway was vivid and yellow .. his eyes were brilliant and full of sparks, the color of a cold ocean. his nose was long, the bridge flat and the nostrils pointed .. his lips frowned when they were calm. he had the thick, handsome features of a stereotyped spaniard. his hair, cropped close, was tight coils of black – coarse – glossy. he asked her her name though he’d only buzzed her in moments ago. she murmured her chosen pseudnom and when he was satisfied with her expression, he shut the door. the noise of the safety chain dropping against the back of the door, brassy knob hissing across – bouncing against wood and paint. when he opened the door again it was to fling it open, throwing his penthouse landscape into view.
the white pile carpet was a flat plane, reaching for the horizon line – windows yawned, opened their mouths so that the world might see the shape of their skyscraper teeth. ceasar purple – the blue of a vein under tourniquet stress – tangerine orange, shades of the city’s morning gloaming melting watercolor fine into one long morning sigh.
he strode away from the painter prostitute, trimming his silhouette from stars and from the Almost Sun. his bedrobe flared, slippers sinking into the white carpet pile. a wine glass was cradled like a small breast in the curve of his left hand .. the red of the wine was lost in the gravity of the hour, black and toiling around it’s pretty prison. two white couches with fat arms – he flung himself into the corner of one. his skin was white and blue, boxer briefs .. he was clean shaven, glowering beautifully, god of published novels and strange expensive art-photography shoots in aquariums, girls in the whale tank. when he crossed his legs, one of the slippers flat backs hung away from his perfectly pedicured heel.
“what,” he said – dispassionate and tender at once - waiting for her to cross the room and take her place on the other couch.
“there’s nobody else to talk to. and i know you’ll listen but you don’t care enough to remember, so.”
“you know me very well. sit, sit. must confess i didn’t think i’d see you again this soon.” and he sighed through his nose.
she took her seat then, a weed flower-like apparition in his japanese minimalist house. “i’m going to murder someone. i’m going to be as free as i can.”
“if you say so, dear. but just how free can we possibly be, these days?”
---
“i know everything will be okay once he hits me. you know, really hits me. and then i can do it.”
“you’ll have a reason.”
“i have to be able to justify it.”
he turned his head and the dark, coarse, shiny coils of his hair caught the light like greasy, new moons.
“ .. n’more ways than one, hum?”
“what do you mean? i’m justified in killing him. i’ve always been justified. i mean for the police.”
“and putting him in prison for a few years wouldn’t do it for you.”
slowly, she said: “no.”
“he has to bleed right? he has to die."
"have you thought about why you need him dead?” the man turned dark eyes on her, pupil-less in the gloaming .. he watched her out of the corner of his eye, and he sipped his wine. as always, his tone was disconnected.
“he should be dead because my mother is dead. because he stole everything from me. i’m empty because of him.”
“and after you’ve murdered him you’ll be miraculously full.”
“you know i’m not so trite as to expect to be full of anything.”
“then why. why. freedom? was that it?”
“that’s .. that’s what i told hedley it was. but you know, i could go. i think. i could go, even if he were still alive. i don’t think freedom is the reason.”
“you think you might like it?”
“like what.” these words were flat, suspicious. they tasted a little unclean on her tongue before they sprang to life, given away.
“like the way he prostitutes you. so you can blame him for it.”
she forced herself, then, to stay in her seat. her jaw worked. it was a conversation worth having. “i hate what he makes me do.”
“you just said you think you could leave if you wanted to,” he pointed out ruthlessly, gesturing with his wine glass. even shane hadn’t ventured to say it. sulane had known the root was here, where the horizon met the city’s broken skyscraper teeth. she was quiet for a long time.
“maybe if i couldn’t blame it on him i could find another way. i could finally see the way.”
“the way to be loved, feel love, taste love? the way to trust, the way to have and cherish and not be inpenetrable? sulane. you said you weren’t so trite as to expect to be full of anything.”
“i didn’t mean ‘ever.’ i could be full. i could be full if he were gone, maybe.”
“maybe. is it worth the maybe?”
“i’ve got to try. i have to know if it’s him, or if it’s me.”
---
sulane talked herself out of killing james before she’d finished putting her heel down. her shoes were converse sneakers, their tread as soft and plain and yellow as institution linoleum .. she stood in the subway station while the train roared away, underground lion, 21st century monster. she was rushing, she didn’t have time for a cigarette. there wasn’t much time to get home .. maybe 5 hours now before he’d come to frame in his judgement. five hours to load her little life into boxes and bags, to label them miss dove, to fly away to the steps of some english cathedral. she felt like running, and for a little while she walked quickly instead ..
but when the subway stairs had fallen away and sun warmed her mouth, sulane knew she could run. she could run - and she could *fly.*
and the painter broke into a jog, split skirt flapping and snapping, greasy curls twisting, the grey world galloping by.
how would she tell hedley? every excuse, she was sure, would = silence. hedley would turn her back and wander to her room and never come out again, never say goodbye. she’d think there was no sense in that, no real reason for farewell. good, her back would say, swaying across the living room receding. sulane’s breath whistled in her nose. good, you’re going. good. good. good. each slap of rubber on pavement was a beat of her heart was a raindrop lost in lashes was a second whispered by the crone in the corner of her mind, was a button on the crone’s coat. that whispering Time .. she’d nearly reached her collar now, gnarled fingers wandering at her breastbone. almost up.
the doorman asked her what was wrong and his voice rode the space between her right shoulder and the wake of her flight .. she skipped the elevator entirely and took the stairs two at a time. five hours to pack up the paintings, five hours to pack every-thing. maybe just the paintings and a change of clothes and her tootbrush. maybe just the paintings. maybe nothing but her life, stuff it in a bag!
she exploded into the carmine hallway with hedley’s deconstructing photographs and fumbled for the key at her throat, leaning to put it out into the lock while the chain followed it up .. she called hedley’s name while the key turned in the lock, but the ‘ly’ was a squeak and fingerprints pressed her throat closed. her breath locked in her lungs. the hallway world bent askew, the painter is dragged aside to a savage mouth whispering in the linear red: ‘you fooled james twice – shame – on – me!”
---
he had her by the hair. sulane felt herself screaming - felt the vibration in her eyeballs and in her teeth, felt the very tremor of her cheekbones. but the surge of her blood was no match for the pure sound of terror - rushing in her ears, roaring, noisy life underneath her skin charging - anticipatory. every action had its natural reaction.
they went inside the living room at angles, james kicked the door closed with a neat black bootheel. all the while she struggled like a fish, arching left, twisting right while her turpentine stained fingertips wrung his wrist over her head .. tears blinded her to everthing but generalities - the wrenching was stealing her breath, sulane struggled to gasp.
"twice i've had to come here. twice. TWICE. you think this is a game, grace? you think it's *fun* for me to come uptown just to muscle you around?"
"james - daddy - james - stop hurting me - stop hurting me - "
"i know you don't care. you're just provoking me. you were always fucking dirty like that. provoking me."
he was hauling her by slow inches toward the balcony, where suddenly the wind was the loudest - french doors flailing outward - two portraits, one of agony and one of rage, stumbling across the slate together. "don't you call me daddy. i'm not your daddy. who knows who your daddy was, grace. one of hundreds! HUNDREDS." he held her by her dandelion curls, cherub yellow, black at their roots .. he thrust her against the rail and she bent at the waist with a sound that began with 'k', a flutter of lashes. "you look down. you have a good look. a good goddamn look because in a minute, the ground is going to look a damn sight closer than it does now!"
"i don't - i don't want - t - to fight - i don't want - t - to do this, any more - i just - want t - t - leave the s - s - city - "
his arm stiffened. she stopped attempting to straighten and *looked* at the ground below. at the air between. the sidewalk, crowded with bodies. unsuspecting. the cars wheeling by. the city's perpetual mist bleeding the color from everything .. and she thought: i've never been to ireland. i've never lived in a blue house. i want to live. i don't want to die. sulane's fingernails broke against the metal railing, minute pain. james .. jimmy .. was laughing the way men on a battlefield laugh .. hysterical, deadly, instinctual. "oh," he said. "you'll leave the city alright." he shook her viciously into the air beyond the balcony rail and she cried out, the noise stolen by the wind. his hips settled against the curve of her backside and he leaned across her, teeth and bones and barely trembling insanity. "you're going far away from here, miss dove."
his body startled before hers did. she didn't hear the first call, but she heard the second like the ringing of churchbells. "sulane?" cried a voice from the living room. it was distinctly male. james straightened with a roar - he gave sulane a shove down and forward. her legs went tumbling over her head; the painter was in the air - abruptly flying, too frightened to scream, thinking wildly .. hell had come too soon!
---
she wasn't falling. she realized she wasn't falling the moment the pain exploded, electric web in her middle and across her hips .. sulane couldn't breathe, in a static place where lungs will not fill and hearts stop beating .. she felt her own eyelashes kissing, her feet beating the air above a second floor balcony, her torso and head hanging into someone else's patio. startled faces became like ghosts against the windowpane, poised in sulane's own reflection and in the silhouette of the sky beyond .. on the third floor balcony - one floor above - there was incomprihensible shouting. the noise of fists meeting flesh, bones breaking, a heavy back met the railing.
their hands were reaching for her. the faces in the window had become the wrists and fingertips of neighbors downstairs - someone was calling the police on her cellphone. someone's spine was bent backward and into the air, out from the balcony above. sulane lost sight of everything but cement, pulled into the patio, onto the balcony floor .. she lay coughing, vomiting, eyes tearing, sight turned up into her lids - a shadow passing, changing the light - one of the good neighbors shrieked and footsteps fled to the edge of nothing to peer over the balcony rail toward the sidewalk -
-ohmygod! ohmygod!
-is he dead? is he dead?
-ofcoursehe'sdead, lola, lookathim, brainsalloverthepavement ..
-ohmygod! are they coming?
-yes, they said it would be ten minutes ..
-shethrewupallovertheplace.
-ohmygod, ican't.
---
sulane had a dream that hedley sat in a chair at her bedside, knitting yellow baby booties. hedley's hair was carefully coiffed in the dream .. she wore a housedress circa 1952 and her legs were crossed at the ankles. the hospital light seemed to suit hedley .. in the sterile flourescent she was angelic and soft at the edges, her face delicate - healthy - sweet. in the dream hedley seemed like she'd been sleeping, like she'd been eating, like she'd stopped taking the pills. and when sulane tried to tell her how beautiful she was, moths covered her tongue and fluttered out into the room in a plague-like swarm and hedley leapt to her feet, pointing hysterically with her knitting needle: whenever you open your mouth, the most horrible things come out! she shrieked without shrieking, fleeing the room. the yellow booties in the chair she'd left came apart slowly, then, leaving only a pile of yarn behind. sulane sobbed, softly, for the feet that would never be.
"sulane .. ? sulane, thank god, sulane .. su .. su why are you crying?"
"hedley, the baby is dead."
"what baby?"
"it would have looked just like you. or my mother."
"sulane. there was no baby .. ? what are you talking about .. ?"
"are you there?"
"you can see me, can't you?"
"he's dead. he's dead now."
"not yet. we'll talk about that later."
"no, now. now. now .. "
"don't sit up, sulane ..
[a groan.]
.. you bruised all of the muscles in your stomach. you'll be stiff for awhile."
"i dreamt we were having a baby."
"james is dead."
"good. we'll call him jimmy from now on, bastard."
"that guy from the cafe pushed him off the balcony."
written at 10:07 p.m.
